Chimney Cap Installation in Granite Bay, CA

Chimney Cap Installation for Granite Bay Homeowners

Granite Bay homes are large, and that changes the nature of the work. It is common here for a single house to have three or four fireplaces — a great room, a primary suite, an outdoor living area and sometimes a study — each of which is a separate system with its own flue, its own damper and its own service requirement. A homeowner asking for a chimney sweep in Granite Bay often does not realise they are asking about four chimneys. The other defining feature is the oak canopy. Granite Bay's mature oaks are magnificent and they overhang a great many roofs, dropping acorns, leaves and limbs directly onto crowns and into uncapped flues, while keeping the masonry shaded and damp long after a storm has passed. Persistently damp, shaded brick stays saturated, and saturated brick is what spalls. Outdoor fireplaces here are also frequently uncapped entirely.

Large homes routinely carrying three or four separate fireplace systems, each needing individual service. A dense mature oak canopy overhangs roofs, filling uncapped flues with acorns and leaf litter and keeping masonry shaded and saturated well after storms, which accelerates spalling. Outdoor fireplaces and fire features are commonly left uncapped.

An uncapped flue is an open pipe pointed at the sky above your living room. Every winter storm sends water straight down onto the damper and smoke shelf, where it mixes with acidic soot and eats mortar joints from the inside. In summer it is an open invitation to starlings, swifts and roof rats. A cap is a few hundred dollars; the water damage it prevents runs into the thousands, and in an ember-exposed foothill neighbourhood the spark arrestor is a wildfire measure as much as a maintenance one.